AMD finally manages to snare a CEO: Lenovo man Read

AMD has announced that its new CEO will be Rory P Read, who was most recently president and COO at Lenovo Group.

The appointment comes after a seven-month search during which a number of IT execs, including Oracle's co-president Mark Hurd, EMC's COO Pat Gelsinger and Apple's Tim Cook, were approached by AMD and rejected the position, people familiar with the search told Bloomberg.

"Rory is a proven leader with an impressive record of driving profitable growth," said Bruce Claflin, chairman of AMD's board of directors. "He is ideally suited to accelerate AMD’s evolution into the world's leading semiconductor design company."

Read spent five years at Lenovo and prior to that, was at IBM for 23 years. He said he was "very pleased" to be joining the semiconductor maker.

"AMD has strong momentum and the opportunity to continue profitably gaining share based on its highly differentiated products, solid financial foundation, and passionate and committed employees," he added.

The position opened up when former CEO Dirk Meyer resigned, reportedly over disagreements with the board about how to take the company into the mobile devices market and other issues. ®